SEGERA: Relief Operation for Tsunami Victims in Aceh Hampered by the StateSix

Six days after the tsunami waves swept the coast ofthe Indonesian province of Aceh and part of NorthSumatra, causing the loss of at least 80,000 lives,the victims are still lacking access to reliefsupposedly distributed by the state apparatus. Thewestern coast of Aceh that was hit the hardest, suchas the city of Meulaboh where only one-fifth of itstotal population of 50,000 is expected to survive, isstill relatively unreachable. The government is soslow in distributing relief that tons of donationpiles up at the airports of Jakarta; of Medan, thecapital of North Sumatra; and of Banda Aceh, thecapital of Aceh. The authority had decided to nolonger accept aid donation from the people in the formof clothing, food, equipment and medicine.

Meanwhile,government procedures hamper international aid toreach Aceh, partly due to the civil emergency statusin Aceh that has isolated the province from theinternational community. Aceh suffered from decades ofconflicts with the central government and since May2003 it has again become target of the Indonesianmilitary operation that caused hundreds of civiliancasualties.The feared disease outbreak that, according to theWHO, could double the loss of lives is more and morethreatening as victims started to get infested withcholera, diarrhea, and skin diseases due to the lackof access to clean water, sanitation, food andmedicine.

Thousands of human bodies can be found onevery corner of Banda Aceh while there is not enoughhuman resource and equipment to bury them; similar orworse situations obviously can be found on the westerncoast of Aceh. The bodies are decaying in open air,contaminating water and air, and increasing the riskof disease outbreak. Relief workers from thegovernment, urgently needed to evacuate victims andbury the bodies, take very long time to get to theareas of disaster due to the lack of means oftransportation and the destruction of communicationinfrastructure. The police and army personnel, thatare equipped with better equipment and vehicles, arereportedly incapable to perform most of the reliefworks.The enthusiasm of people in other parts of the countryto help Aceh is very high. Aid-collecting posts(posko) or crisis centres are mushrooming throughoutIndonesia and many people are drafting as volunteers.Civilian organizations in and outside Aceh that hadmanaged to send their volunteer to the disaster areasare taking more role than the state apparatus is inhelping the victims.

They erected tents and gavesanitation; distributed food, clothing and medicine;buried bodies and evacuated victims. However, thenumber of volunteers, relief workers, experts andmedics are still far from sufficient.At the same time, civilian volunteers have to facemany obstacles to perform relief works in Aceh. Theairplane ticket price to Aceh from Jakarta or fromMedan suddenly became as high as threefold the normalprice as airline companies are drawing profit from thedisaster. Neither has the government given anyaccommodation nor help for the volunteers. Reportedly,in some disaster areas that are still isolated andwhere information centers are yet exist, the stateapparatus charged some fees to volunteers. To overcomesuch obstacles some civilian organization consolidatedand formed the Civil Society Coalition for the Victimsof Earthquake and Tsunami, to mobilize relief andvolunteers and to monitor the flow of aid to Aceh. Itis also important to supervise the relief operation,as there have been a lot of cases in the past whenrelief or humanitarian fund was corrupted.

Thecoalition has also sent as many as 100 volunteers toAceh.The Solidarity of People Movement for Aceh (SEGERA) –in itself a coalition that struggle for the democraticrights of the Aceh people, formed since 2001,consisted of labour unions, student organizations,acehnese pro-democracy organizations and somepolitical parties – is among the 24 organizations thatjoined the coalition. Until the time of the writing,SEGERA have sent 15 volunteers from Jakarta todisaster areas in Aceh. Almost all of them areacehnese democratic activists outside Aceh, whosefamilies become victims or are still missing. Morevolunteers are being prepared to follow them soon.SEGERA has set up aid-collecting posts (posko) orcrisis centers in Jakarta, Yogyakarta, Bandung andMedan; and aid-distribution posts in two cities inAceh, Banda Aceh and Meulaboh.

As a response to thesluggish relief operation, SEGERA urges that:

1. The government revokes the status of civilemergency to open access to Aceh for local andinternational aid and relief operation.

2. The state apparatus and the military give moreaccess and facilities to both national andinternational civilian organizations to allow themmore involvement in the relief operation

3. The government immediately conduct a reconstructionand rebuild the infrastructure destroyed by thedisaster
January 1st, 2005
Solidaritas Gerakan Rakyat untuk Aceh - Solidarity ofPeople Movement for Aceh (SEGERA)